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The Baltimore Orioles transformation to a minor league team is now complete

It’s August 1st which means the Major League Baseball (MLB) trade deadline has come and gone. The Baltimore Orioles got out their trade hammer and let it swing with reckless abandon.

The Orioles acquired a lot of minor league talent. Too bad their farm system is terrible. They would have a better farm system if they employed actual farmers to develop their prospects.

An actual farmer should be put in charge of the Orioles farm system.

Real farmers. The guys who grow potatoes and complain their government subsidies aren’t higher.

The problem with the Orioles is ownership

Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos.

Unfortunately, the Orioles couldn’t trade their owner Peter Angelos or his two sons, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Not only would there be no takers, evidently MLB doesn’t allow trading away ownership. That’s too bad.

Angelos bought the Orioles on August 2, 1993. From 1994 to today, the Orioles have enjoyed a win-loss record of 1,861 -2,064. That works out to a .901 winning percentage. In that same time span, the Orioles have had 17 losing seasons. That’s 17 out of 25 seasons.

Ticket prices should be based on a team’s winning percentage

This season has been extremely brutal. Out of 107 games, the Orioles have only won 32 games. That’s ridiculous. MLB should have rules in place for situations like this. If a team fails to have a winning percentage above a certain number, the team is prohibited from charging MLB prices for tickets. A better idea would be to have all teams base their ticket prices on their winning percentage. There would be a set price for tickets established by MLB and then every ten games, the price would change based on the team’s winning percentage. Teams with a winning percentage above one would be able to charge more, teams with a winning percentage below one would be forced to charge less.

Right now with a winning percentage of only .299, the Orioles are still pricing tickets what they would if they were one of the best teams in the league. That’s immoral.

The Baltimore Orioles are the Washington Generals of MLB

The Harlem Globetrotters only opponent, the Washington Generals.

Currently, the only reason to go to an Orioles game is if you’re a fan of the opposing team. It’s one of the reasons they price tickets against the Red Sox and the Yankees higher than they do for the White Sox or Mets. There are fans of the Red Sox and Yankees up and down the mid-Atlantic region. These fans are willing to pay more to see their favorite team play the Orioles, especially when the Orioles are terrible. Fans of other teams usually see their team win against the Orioles. Angelos is able to capitalize on this and add even more money to his already inflated bank account.

Peter Angelos has a lot of money. I have it on good authority when Angelos is home, he sits upon a giant pile of gold, much like the dragon from The Hobbit. Win or lose, the Orioles allow him to add to his giant pile of gold.